Short lived victory

Kale had a victory today, even if it was just for three hours :) Jodi, his nurse called this morning to let us know that the Dr. wanted to try him out on the Drager vent to see how he handled it. She told me that she told the respiratory team when they brought the vent in that they better be bringing in the lucky vent because we wanted him to stay on it this time :) Well...he got to stay on that vent for about 3 hours. They tried a few different settings and his gases just weren't responding very well. So, they switched him back to the high frequency vent around 2pm and his gases looked much better on that. While he was on the other vent though Jodi was suctioning a lot of mucus out of his tube that goes into his lungs. She said a lot of times the high frequency vent won't let the mucus come out of the lungs because it's constantly pushing air in. So, one way to look at the short time on the other vent is that it gave him a chance to get all that gunk out of his lungs. We're crossing our fingers that he gets another shot at that vent later in the week, hopefully right in time for Fathers Day!

The other change made today by the Dr. was to increase his calories for his food. He is at 27 calories now, and his volume is still at 18 mls every 3 hrs. His weight was at 2 lbs. 5 oz. today, and his length is up to 13.5 inches! So, that means he's tolerating his feeds and growing, even though he's a little below the growth curve.

Today they also decided to change the frequency of his blood labs. He was getting labs drawn every day, and now they are going to bump it down a bit and just do them a few times a week. So, that's a sign that they feel he's a bit more stable!

We're praying that Kale has a good night, gets some rest and over the day tomorrow his gases improve so he can have another shot at the other vent later in the week!